The 'new' Syrian media law is nothing new

On August 28, President Bashar al-Assad approved a new media
law that purportedly upholds freedom of expression and bans the arrest of
journalists. Yet less than a week later, on Saturday, a Syrian journalist and
contributor to the pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat was arrested, CPJ reported.
Just two days before the endorsement of
the law, Syrian cartoonist Ali Ferzat was brutally attacked by masked assailants. A close look at the legislation, Decree No. 108,
suggests the Assad regime is simply paying lip service to reform.

Local journalists say there is nothing really "new" about the media law
and that it merely dresses up the regime's long-standing repressive tactics. "I
don't trust anything they say," said Karim al-Afnan, a Syrian freelance
journalist. "They have arrested several of our journalists without rhyme or
reason."

The Syrian decree outlines what can be seen as "positive"
press freedom clauses, such as the lack of a "monopoly on the media" and the "right
to access of information about public affairs," and bans "the arrest, questioning, or searching of
journalists." And yet the legislation contains several anti-press
clauses, including barring the media from publishing content that affects "national
unity and national security," incites sectarian strife or "hate crimes," or harms state symbols.
The law also forbids the publication of any information about the armed forces.
It holds editors-in-chief, journalists, and even spokespeople accountable for
actions that constitute a violation of the law and imposes fines on them of up
to one million Syrian pounds(US$21,000).

Article 3 of the new measure says the law "upholds freedom
of expression guaranteed in the Syrian constitution" and the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, which Syria has ratified. But Article 4
goes on to say that the media must "respect this freedom of expression" by
"practicing it with awareness and responsibility" and does not clarify the
statement's meaning.The Islamic
Republic of Iran's press law contains similar language, and Iran is tied with China for the highest number of
imprisoned journalists in the world, according to CPJ research.

The measure also calls for the establishment of an
independent body to "monitor media freedom." The creation of such a
"monitoring" body indicates less of an effort by the Syrian authorities to
encourage a free press but more of a conscious attempt to mask repressive
tactics as press freedoms.

The new media law comes amid a brutal, ongoing clampdown on
anti-regime protesters. Avaaz, the U.K.-based
global nonprofit campaigning organization, estimates the number
of disappeared people in Syria to be
close to 3,000 since the beginning of the uprising. Several local and
international human rights groups estimate that thousands of people have been
arrested.According to the United
Nations, 2,200 people have been killed since the Syrian uprising began in
March.

CPJ Middle East and North Africa Research Associate Dahlia El Zein, a Lebanese native who grew up in Cairo, received her master’s degree in Arab studies from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Washington, D.C. She speaks Arabic fluently and has traveled widely in the Middle East.